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CHIPMAKER Intel’s unveiling of an Atom-based smartphone reference design at CES is the most serious attempt yet by the chip giant to break into the lucrative handset market, and it heats up the rivalry between it and ARM, the dominant chip designer in the mobile device market.

Intel announced partnerships with Lenovo and Motorola at CES in Las Vegas to launch smartphones based on its latest Atom processor, the Atom Z2460, codenamed Medfield.

Although they are not expected to ship until later this year, the impending arrival of these handsets could bring competition to a market that has been almost entirely owned by the ARM chip architecture and its various licensees.

However, details about the Medfield chip and the handsets using it are sparse at the moment. The processor is a single-core 1.6GHz component, and so far we know that it supports hyper-threading and has an integrated PowerVR GPU.

Lenovo’s handset, as demonstrated at CES, combines the Intel Atom Medfield chip with 16GB of internal storage, a 4.5in display and an x86 version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

So far it seems that testers report having been impressed with performance of the reference design handsets, but power consumption is also a critical factor. Intel has not disclosed full details about Medfield’s power consumption so far, other than saying it is lower than the Moorestown processor from a couple of years ago.

Raw processing performance has always been one area where Intel’s x86 architecture has stood out against rivals such as ARM, but while Medfield is a single-core chip, ARM licensees are already introducing quad-core designs that promise to boost performance while consuming no more power than earlier chips.

INTEL is gearing up to push into the smartphone market by launching Android devices that run Intel Atom Medfield chips. The chip maker has created a reference design to give manufacturers an idea of what the final design could look like.

Key specifications include the 1.6GHz Intel Atom Medfield single core processor, a 4.03in screen, 8-megapixel camera and support for Android Ice Cream Sandwich. There is no set release date yet, but Intel will need to move as quickly as possible if it wants to take on ARM.

If you are a normal desktop user or even a power user with plans to run at over 4GHz, the vanilla LGA-1155 Sandy Bridge platform is good enough. You get some of the fastest CPUs on the market today paired with reasonably priced motherboards and the ability to use Quick Sync to transcode video…er…quickly. If that's not enough, Intel launched a higher end platform last month: the LGA-2011 Sandy Bridge E.

Take a regular Sandy Bridge, add PCIe 3.0 support, increase the number of PCIe lanes that branch off of the CPU (from 16 to 40 lanes), double the number of memory channels (4 x 64-bit DDR3 memory controllers) and you've got Sandy Bridge E and its LGA-2011/X79 platform. SNB-E is currently available in two forms: a 9 6-core Extreme Edition part (Core i7 3960X) and a 5 6-core unlocked version (Core i7 3930K). Neither is exactly cheap but if you need the PCIe lanes, core count and memory bandwidth, they are your only ticket.

LGA-2011 SNB-E (left) vs. LGA-1155 SNB (right)

Sandy Bridge E is a fairly niche platform to begin with, but what about the niche within the niche (extremeception?) of users who just need the LGA-2011 platform but not necessarily a 6-core behemoth? For those users, there's the Core i7 3820.

Read on for our review!

KOREAN DISPLAY MAKER LG and chipmaker Intel have joined forces to adopt and promote WiDi technology.

WiDi or Wireless Display technology made by Intel will be embedded in LG’s Cinema 3D Smart TVs from next year. It will allow users to wirelessly steam high definition content from devices such as a laptop to larger screens like a TV’s.

Seog-ho Ro, SVP of home entertainment at LG said, “Through this strategic alliance, Cinema 3D Smart TV users will be able to access a wider variety of content in a more convenient manner.”

“Intel WiDi will be one of several features that will enhance the user convenience of our CINEMA 3D Smart TVs, further differentiating our products from the competition.”

The name can be a bit misleading because WiDi doesn’t actually require a connection though something like router to work. Instead, the two devices establish a connection directly via their WiFi chips.

While WiDi is being used to share content the device that holds the content can still be used for other tasks. LG said it will show off WiDi enabled products at next month’s consumer electronics show (CES).

“Intel is planning to expand Intel WiDi technology to various devices to provide consumers the seamless, smarter usage experience,” said Hee-Sung Lee, country manager of Intel Korea. “Through this collaboration with LG Electronics, LG Cinema 3D Smart TV users could also benefit from Intel WiDi without the need to purchase an external adapter.” µ

CHIPMAKER Intel’s CPU lines still dominate the performance as well as overall product spread in the PC market, from ultrabooks to supercomputers. However, the regular yearly tick-tock rhythm seems to have slowed down somewhat over the past year or two.

Remember the 2008 roadmap slides – the 2008 Nehalem was to be followed by 2009 Westmere, then 2010 Sandy Bridge and 2011 Ivy Bridge. Of course, Sandy Bridge became a 2011 product, with the flagship Sandy Bridge-E, that is, Core i7 3960X only arriving at the end of this year. The full-functionality version, the eight-core Sandy Bridge-EP or Xeon E5 2600, will be coming out in the market only at the end of first quarter of next year.

Then, the 2011 Ivy Bridge is now likely to become a May 2012 product launch even for the initial mainstream quad-core parts for the LGA1155 socket, with the flagship E/EP parts likely somewhere down the road in early 2013. Let’s not even try to guess what impact it will have on the Haswell launch after that.

What is happening? Well yes, the chippery does get more complex with each new generation. The eight-core Sandy Bridge-EP stretches the limits of the 32nm process with its 20MB cache and four memory channels, while having to address a wide range of power and performance points with a single die.

The yet uncharted waters of the 22nm tri-gate process could also pose some challenges for Ivy Bridge, the first CPU to use it. You’ve also seen the initial teething problems of the Patsburg chipset, including its desktop version, the X79. All that takes some time to resolve.

However, no one at Intel seems to be bashing their heads against the wall over this. Well, why should they? The only x86 competitor in town at the high end, AMD, didn’t exactly impress the crowds with its initial Bulldozer launch. The real meat there will have to be in the upcoming Piledriver core update, as well as more software that will be re-compiled to support Bulldozer’s instruction extensions and features better, and new sockets with more memory and interconnect bandwidth to prepare for future high-end Fusion APUs as well.

Until then, even Intel’s current Westmere cores at the high end, and the mainstream quad-core Sandy Bridge, do their competitive jobs more than well enough.

One thing did bother us a bit, although we have to classify it in the rumour department. Just before the Bulldozer launch, Intel was seemingly quite firm with its plan to have the first Ivy Bridge parts sometime in February. However, after that launch and the Bulldozer performance reviews came out, the updated roadmaps all over the web suddenly showed Ivy Bridge sliding towards May.

Could Intel really think there’s no point in rushing that launch when the existing line can still be the king of the hill and provide safe, high ROI for a while longer? As we said, the real reasons could be many, however one can’t help but raise the question.

CHIPMAKER Intel has warned that its current quarter revenues will be hit by hard drive supply shortages.

Intel joins a number of system vendors including Acer, Dell and HP in warning that its sales will be hurt by the devastating floods in Thailand that have left much of the hard drive industry reeling. As system vendors are unable to find hard drives to finish complete systems, every other component is put on hold, including Intel’s processors.

Tom Kilroy, a senior VP at Intel told analysts, “In the last two weeks, as the supply became more apparent, we saw a substantial change in our order rate. Most of our customers are concerned the shortage will continue – especially through the early part of the first quarter.”

Kilroy’s announcement sent Intel shares down by almost five per cent, however the firm also said the hard drive shortage could speed up solid state drive (SSD) adoption. While Intel’s SSD range is one of many on the market, the firm also supplies NAND flash memory chips to a number of its perceived rivals, such as OCZ and Crucial.

Seagate has said it is largely unaffected by the floods in Thailand, while Western Digital has restarted production in one of its plants in Thailand. Both firms have said that it will take many months before supply will again be able to meet demand.

Intel is seen as a bellwether of the information technology industry and its admission that it hasn’t come out unscathed from the Thai floods has underscored the inter-dependence of computer component makers. µ

Intel has announced via several Product Change Notifications that it will be discontinuing a total of 19 Clarkdale, Lynnfield, and Sandy Bridge desktop CPUs across sockets 1366, 1156, and 1155. OEMs may no longer order the chips from Intel after December 7, 2012, and boxed CPUs will only be available while supplies last.

The complete list includes the Pentium G6950, G6960, G620, G620T, and G840; the Core i3 540 and 2100T; the Core i5 650, 660, 670, 680, and 2300; and the Core i7 860, 870, 930, 950, 960, 980, and 990X. Many of these processors have been around for over two years now, and with Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge E products available at almost all conceivable price points (and with Ivy Bridge just around the corner), the discontinuation of these processors is unsurprising. 

More surprising is the cutting of several Sandy Bridge Pentium models, which were released only a few months ago. However, the models in question have already been replaced by slightly faster models (the G630, G630T, and G860, with the G850 apparently still available), and high competition in this market segment from both Intel's own Sandy Bridge Celerons and AMD's offerings is bound to lead to faster turnover.

Source: CPU World

Intel's release notes for Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 11.5 Alpha version reveal that they have plans to add TRIM support for RAID 0 arrays in the next version of RST. Windows 7 and Intel's RST have supported TRIM for quite a while, but the support has always excluded RAID 0 arrays. We don't know when the RST version with TRIM will arrive but given that the Alpha version dates back to August 5th, a newer version with TRIM should be expected sooner than later.

The benefits of TRIM are obvious because the write performance of an SSD will degrade in the long run without TRIM (or good garbage collection). Here is a quick brief on what TRIM is and what does it do. TRIM is a simple command that allows the OS to inform the SSD controller what files are no longer in use (i.e. have been deleted). NAND flash doesn't allow individual pages to be erased; only a block can be erased. This causes problems because without TRIM, the OS just marks the deleted files as empty space, meaning that the actual data is not erased from the drive. When you run out of free blocks, you first have to read the whole block to cache before you can erase and then re-write the block. That means instead of a simple write, the SSD has to do a read, and erase, and then a write, which is why the write speed in degraded mode is much slower. For more detailed explanation on TRIM, take a look at our The SSD Anthology article.

For users who run SSDs in RAID 0, this is great news. While RAID 0 always introduces reliability concerns, the lack of TRIM is another obstacle for many. High capacity SSDs still cost a hefty premium, and putting two smaller SSDs in RAID 0 can save you a few bucks, plus you get increased read and write speeds.

Source: Intel via StorageReview

CHIPMAKER Intel has hinted that touchscreen enabled Ultrabook laptops will tip up next year with the introduction of Windows 8.

Next year’s Ultrabook selection will offer Intel’s Ivy Bridge processor and will also feature touchscreen control, according to Tom’s Hardware. This makes some sense, considering that the Windows 8 user interface has a tile system similar to that of the Windows Phone operating system.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini said at the Intel Capital Global Summit, “Starting with Windows 8, you [will] have a mainstream operating system incorporating touch.”

“Our view is that in the ultrabook lines, touch is a pretty critical enabler. When users see that new Windows interface, they’re going to want to touch it. If the screen does nothing, you [will] have disappointed [the] consumer.”

We saw an Ultrabook running Windows 8 at this year’s Intel Developer Forum in September. However, it did not have a touchscreen and was demonstrated using just the keyboard and mouse. The demonstrator was keen to point out the fact that it worked fine without touchscreen support.

The Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks we saw at IDF didn’t have Windows 8 or touchscreen support either, but apparently they were just on stage to look pretty.

Otellini said that to achieve this, “we have to get touch to a lower cost. This is particularly important, as we move to the launch of Windows 8. The iPad and the iPhone have made touch a paradigm.” He also said that Chipzilla will invest in this area with the Ultrabook Fund. µ

Intel has quietly released a new top-of-the-line Sandy Bridge CPU: Core i7-2700K. We reported the i7-2700K "leak" about a month ago, and guessed that i7-2700K will be released around the same time as AMD's Bulldozer CPUs, which ended being quite accurate. In terms of specs, 2700K is very similar to 2600K – the only difference is the extra CPU multiplier and hence the extra 100MHz in 2700K. That means 2700K has default frequency of 3.5GHz and up to 3.9GHz Turbo. Otherwise 2700K is equal to 2600K: Four cores, Hyper-Threading (up to eight threads) and 8MB L3 cache. Like the "K" implies, the CPU multiplier is unlocked, allowing effortless overclocking. Intel hasn't, however, added 2700K to their product database yet (aka ARK), so possible changes in stepping for example are unknown. 2700K is sold for 2 in 1000 unit lots, making it more expensive than 2600K. 

On top of the launch of i7-2700K, Intel has also reduced the prices of three CPUs: i3-2120, Pentium G850 and G630. As the naming suggests, these CPUs are lower-end desktop models. The new prices are 7, and respectively. The price cuts range from 13% to 15%, the biggest cut being i3-2120's .